That’s the amount of money the federal government estimates we can save annually by reducing energy use in commercial buildings 20 percent by 2020. To achieve the goal, the Obama administration in 2011 initiated the Better Buildings Challenge, a way to encourage investment, share information and create demonstration projects that save energy.

It’s no small effort. Finding energy savings in buildings can be a Where’s Waldo-style mission. Hidden from view are faulty valves and switches, lighting controls that don’t jive with human activity, and malfunctioning appliances that suck up energy.

But the federal program — along with other state, city and corporate efforts — are leading to intriguing technologies and demonstration projects.

Seattle’s Bullitt Center

In Seattle, a building that describes itself as the world’s greenest, opened April 22. The 50,000 square-foot Bullitt Center is designed to be 83 percent more efficient than is typical. But it isn’t stopping there. Its owners want to achieve complete energy and water self-sufficiency over a year.

The Bullitt Center is engaging in a certification process called the Living Building Challenge, one of the toughest badges of honor for a building to achieve. The standard goes beyond just saving energy and water, and requires that the building helps restore the natural environment.

Of course the Bullitt Center has solar panels, occupancy sensors and data displays that show energy use and emissions — all that you would expect of a contemporary green building. But it also has other interesting design elements. The building’s mechanical workings are in plain view so everyone inside can better see what’s going on. Ninety percent of the lighting is natural. Tenants must adhere to electricity budgets as a term of the lease, and they share in any net metering profits the building accrues. The structure is heavy timber, not the usual steel or concrete of most office buildings. Water will come only from rain treated onsite.

The design nudges occupants toward energy conservation in various ways. For example, the stairway offers spectacular views meant to discourage use of the elevator. “There is no such thing as a net-zero building, only net-zero occupants,” said Luke McKneally, solar engineering project manager, who was quoted in a Bullitt Center blog by Brad Khan.

Boston’ FirstFuel

The U.S. would achieve the 20 percent federal goal quickly if its cities had blocks and blocks of Bullitt Center-type structures. But, alas, most of our buildings are well, already built. So how do we bring efficiency to the remaining 5 million or so commercial buildings?

FirstFuel Software, located outside of Boston in the town of Lexington, has been circulating some impressive findings in recent months indicating that ‘zero-touch audits’ offer a path to big savings in existing buildings. The company applies advanced analytics to see where a building is wasting energy.

What’s unique here is that FirstFuel never sets foot on the building’s premises. Instead, the company uses interval meter data supplied by the local utility and some other basic information about the building.

Working with the Department of Defense, PG&E and other large utilities and federal agencies, FirstFuel says it has found that buildings can achieve a large amount of savings through operational improvements at little or no cost to building owners.

FirstFuel uncovered $12 million in operational savings when it applied its Remote Building Analytics to various kinds of buildings totaling 60-million square feet. Extrapolating from its work thus far, FirstFuel estimates that US buildings could save $17 billion in energy costs through operational improvements.

Some of the most common inefficiencies are the most difficult to uncover, according to FirstFuel. For example, the company found — to the surprise of building managers — that heating and cooling systems were often working at odds. Both would operate at the same time, as the building transitioned from one system to the other to maintain a certain temperature. This set the AC in overdrive to compensate for the hot air from the heating system.

“We position ourselves as the folks that can find operational savings that other methods can’t,” said Erik Mazmanian, FirstFuel Software’s marketing and strategy manager, in a recent interview.

The company sees its platform as a way to achieve scale in energy savings. Rather than marketing to building managers, FirstFuel is focusing on utilities. In many states, utilities must achieve a specified level of energy efficiency each year under state rules. The FirstFuel platform allows them to study swaths of buildings within their service territory and determine where they can achieve the greatest bang for their buck.

FirstFuel analytics do not replace the conventional energy audit — the hands-on work of engineers and auditors working on a building retrofit, Mazmanian said. Instead, it acts as a kind of building “score keeper,” using analytics to pinpoint operational inefficiencies and then track results when they are corrected.

Both projects — the Bullitt Center and FirstFuel’s analytics – are examples of just two of many initiatives under way to bring greater efficiency toour buildings. To help the effort, the US Department of Energy is beta testing a building performance database with actual statistics on tens of thousands of commercial and residential buildings. In addition, more than 110 organizations, representing two billion square feet, have pledged to help reach the 20 percent savings goals. Some recent additions include Sprint, Macy’s and Johnson Controls and the city of Houston.

So the $40 billion pot of negawatts at the end of the electric rainbow may not be easy to reach — but the building sector has set off on the quest.

Elisa Wood is a long-time energy writer, whose blogs have been picked up by CNN, the New York Times, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. Her work can be found here.

The information and views expressed in this blog post are solely those of the author and not necessarily those of RenewableEnergyWorld.com
or the companies that advertise on this Web site and other publications. This blog was posted directly by the author and was not reviewed for
accuracy, spelling or grammar.

10 Comments

The other evening (make note of the fact it's the evening) we had a meeting where 30 people were just sitting in a room. As just a matter of course the air conditioning had been turned on.

After a few minutes of my being tortured by the constant Arctic blast being emmitted by this otherwise modern buildings 'bandaid for previous lack of proper design' I requested the system be turned off.

Over the objections of the majority, who felt without air conditioning the room would soon become stuffy, (note that HVAC is more HAC since the majority of the systems just reciculate the same dirty stale air turned into an icy draft) the system was turned off.

The meeting resumed and for the next 4 hours there were no complaints about heat or stuffy air.

After the meeting I could not find a single person who felt air conditioning had been needed.

How many times is this exact scenario played out acros the USA?

And how much energy could be saved if the system were more efficient when operating in those rare times when actually needed?

BTW the entire room was lit with old T12 'Troffers'.

LED's anyone?

A 20% reduction by 2020?

Only if we all do as little as possible to reduce consumption.

The low hanging fruit is everywhere and most has been stinking for some time and now is drawing flies.

We need to reduce the use of fossil fuels (and CO2 output in general) below the ability of the planet to naturally capture and use the CO2. That is a very big difference!

Fossil fuels have been used for thousands of years. It wasn't until that we became extremely dependent on them and switched to fossil fuels almost exclusively that we started to adversely impact the CO2 ratios.

Energy efficiency improvements as suggested by the authors story, are one of the first low cost steps to reduce the need for any energy source. That in turn makes it much easier to reduce the need for fossil fuels.

The Bullitt Center building is actually quite amazing to see and look at. ( www.bullittcenter.org )

Energy efficiency improvements achieved through equipment replacement with high efficiency motors, variable speed drives and automated controls tend to permanently reduce baseload and peak demand in the building. In the USA,@50% of the baseload is coal-fired.
Efficiency measures displace coal.
Efficiency goals and planning drive new equipment development and manufacturing.
More efficient equipment and operation means less energy-intensive sources like solar PV and solar thermal can provide much more of the total power needs of a household or structure.
Insulate everything. Fix the holes in the leaky bucket before you pour more money into it.

ANONYMOUS
May 3, 2013

"It makes no difference if we burn up our fossil fuels in 200 years or 1000 years, either way we destroy the planet."

No difference? taking 1000 years to do what we might otherwise do in 200 makes 800 years difference. In those 800 years - we might even make some headway to solving even more issues!!

@GeraldR--If you were referring to my comment, I only want people to keep in mind that eventually we have to get off of fossil fuels completely. There are numerous examples of short term solutions that might not be the correct long term solution. For a homeowner, installing a high efficiency furnace in the northern climates may seem reasonable, and the gas companies will be more than willing to lock in a customer for 25 years, but for a long term solution, that homeowner might have been better off finding a heating solution that did not use fossil fuels. In many cases the first 30%-40% of savings is easy, an investment that locks a user into fossil fuels for 20 years might not be the correct solution. This is not just individual users, but gets propagated to public policy in rebates for energy efficiency, when it might be better to be inefficient and not use fossil fuels.

Patrick keeps beating this drum, but he's right. How often is it ultra-bright outside while interior spaces are lit by fixtures suspended from a built roof? This is a rather old idea that can be brought into the modern era with great modern materials and solar facets combined with glazing. With typicall lighting attempting to achieve 500-1000 Lux and indirect sunlight at 10,000-25,000 Lux, you don't need a very high aperture ratio to eliminate the need for artificial light.
I'm guessing that such a system with low-E glazing can have a lower thermal gain and greater durability than a typical built roof surface.

A lot of it can be accessed with a solarized roof. It is falling on the roof anyway, we might as well use it.

Bring the light in, and put the heat to good use. Futura Solar designed its Sawtooth Daylighter to do just that for low profile commercial buildings. Bring all that Utility to the business beneath the roof on a routine basis. It's good for the economy as well as the ecology.

Why all the negativity? Efficiency low hanging fruit is so easy to deal with. Given the relatively high energy intensity of North American real estate, a 50% reduction in energy use would just approach common practice in several developed countries. For commercial space, it's mainly HVAC and lighting followed by equipment. Simply applying simple BKM shoule easily return 20%. In one large building we saw 15% by just putting lighting and HVAC on occupancy controls. Office area lighting was reduced by 25% by putting lighting near windows on light level sensors as well. The next step would be to put in skylights.
Regulations should be changed to mandate a minimum 85 Lm/W USABLE light from lighting fixtures and a minimum IE2 energy rating for all motors over 1/10 horsepower and for all fan motors. Since glass-wall construction is so popular, upgrade to auxilliary interior double pane glazing. No new technology needed.
In addition to the 'Waldo' reference the article has another howler, 'The U.S. would achieve the 20 percent federal goal quickly if its cities had blocks and blocks of Bullitt Center-type structures.' - actually, if only 1/4 of buildings achieved this level of performance and the others did nothing, 20% would be the result.
Education is an important issue - while any commercial operator may be great at what they do, what they do may not result in expertise in energy management. Also, since statistically, smaller spaces dominate the total square footage and since many of these spaces are leased, in addition to education, we need strong building codes: eventually, low efficiency space should be denied occupancy permits; in the mean time, commercial spaces should be required to be prominantly labelled with an energy use rating.

Just remember, we cannot solve climate change with conservation. It makes no difference if we burn up our fossil fuels in 200 years or 1000 years, either way we destroy the planet. The emphasis should be to get off of fossil fuels completely. Even if ExxonMobil was giving away gasoline and natural gas,and the Koch brothers were giving away coal, we can't use it.

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Elisa Wood is a long-time energy writer whose work appears in many of the industry's top magazines and newsletters, among them Renewable Energy World and Platts. She serves as chief editor of EnergyEfficiencyMarkets.com. Her work has been...